Troop withdrawal?

During the campaign, Mark Shields predicted on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer that no matter who was elected President, U.S. troops would be withdrawn within 6 months of the inauguration. David Brooks laughed it off, saying he'd buy Shields lunch if that turned out to be true and Shields simply shrugged. But today, reading these stories, I can't help thinking that he may have been right.

According to the Times, Washington is abuzz with rumors and speculation over when our troops may be pulled out of Iraq. Stratfor.com argued over the weekend that we should pull our troops out to the periphery of Iraq and let natural processes (i.e., civil war) take place - that the status quo is not making the country safer. Yesterday, Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, declined to say whether he would endorse an extension of the National Guard and Reserve who make up 40% of the fighting force in Iraq.


The war in Iraq is clearly not helping Bush politically. His approval rating is the same as it was before the election and incumbents usually get a 5-10 point post-election bounce. Whatever he may have gained by a "stay the course in Iraq" message during the presidential campaign is unlikely to provide Bush with lengthy coattails by the time we get around to the mid-term elections in '06, where a message of "having completed the job in Iraq" would be more popular. And with some kind of Iraqi election having taken place on January 30th, the administration could claim to have stuck around long enough to see Iraq stand on it's own two feet before pulling out our troops. While violence and the possible disintegration of the government in Iraq could take place if we pulled out, it may be that the administration hopes, with the troops out, media attention in Iraq will fade. Few Americans would know or even care that we'd invaded a country and then left, sparking a nasty civil war where none had been before.

I mean, didn't we do this pretty regularly in South America?